Meet "Queen Wasp" or alternative titles "If I Be Waspish" or "Beware My Sting". She is my most recent painting, completed in January, made specifically for the "All The World is a Stage" Shakespeare themed show at Museo Gallery in Langley WA. The assignment for the show was for us to pick a quote from any Shakespeare play and then create an artwork that also incorporated the quote within it. I chose "If I be Waspish, beware my sting." from Taming of the Shrew. You can see the quote within the lace on her chest, which is actual silk cord that I adhered to the painting. Her earrings and the boning of her corset are also little embellishments. Her hairstyle is a wasp nest (2018's answer to the 50's beehive, HA!), and her dress is decorated with designs inspired by wasp wings and hive structure. For me she represents the anger that has been stirred up within the feminine psyche against all of the injustices perpetrated by toxic masculinity. Don't kick the wasp's nest if you don't want to get stung.

"If I be Waspish" is 24" X 36" on a cradled birch panel, Mixed Media Acrylic Painting. $1200. through Museo Gallery. Show ends February 20th.

Around the same time that I completed the painting, the international fancy pants magazine World of Interiors (a Condé Nast publication) reached out and asked if I wanted to participate in their Artistic Impressions ad campaign. I said WHY YES, YES I WOULD, and so Queen Wasp now graces the pages of this hipster styley mag. I think she fits right in!